Webhost4Life FTW!!!
You’ve probably read some of my rants on dealing with bad customer service in here, here and here. This post, i promise, would be different.
This is about a hosting company named : WebHost4Life. I’ve been their customers for years, they offer a windows based hosting and there is ‘nothing special’ during my 2 years with webhost4life. Everything run as expected, i can remote the database server - some of hosting companies banned this features *helloo… you are in internet business*, ssl implementation, frontpage support and the reliability reaching 99% if compared in 2 years range server uptime. They also offer the Sharepoint package, and run preety well.
The ‘nothing special’ in web hosting world should have been appreciated in a way that is required a complex server maintenance, monitoring and great customer service behind.
This story started last week, my customer need to build a landing page for huge event in Singapore. Check the .sg domain, and after a week - we finally got a confirmation from AsiaRegistry for my .com.sg and .sg domain. It was another bad experience though, 5 days processing just to get my domain live. Even I need to remind the technical support to process my nameservers changes, something that should be done automatically. And even so, they didn’t reply my email (i will stop it rite now, or this post will be another rant story) 
My customer insist to go with Sharepoint for a landing page, which usually not a popular choice. I guess, the decision inspired by SBY who love to take a !popular vote ;o) So, I decided to create a new account under sharepoint plan with WebHost4Life. Everything setup, there’s a bit glitchs here and there but can easily manage by having a Live Chat with their tech support.
The site scheduled to live next week, so we spent the whole week to working it on. And this Friday evening, the corporate marketing decided not to use Sharepoint but standard HTML site. (_ _’)
So open my skype, dial the hotline support, received by answering machine and i’m expected to wait for 20 minutes. Oh no.. Then I tried contacting the support directly using the Live Chat features, handled by Gavinc. I explained him my problem, he recognized it, then boom.. the windows chat suddenly closed. Proceed with the second attempt - and this time I have elainey as the operator.
Guess what, instead of starting my explanation from 0, I asked her a simple question. Can I chat with Gavinc, we were in discussion before my windows closed. She answered “Yes sir, let me transfer with Gavinc”. Remember this is a live chat in a web browser, having this features in a web based application is a jaw-breaking and show some class. They are not only have a good customer service policy, but they have a cool technology to support them. I can see my local time was 4pm and operator time was 5am morning.
This story has the happy ending, 15 minutes after my inquiry with Gavinc - they close my Sharepoint account and transfer my domain to another existing windows based account. Cool, then I don’t need to change my nameservers in AsiaRegistry - otherwise I will have a 3 sleepless nights in a row. 
Thank You WH4L for the great service!
(now where were we ? i shouldn’t wrote a post before finish the page.. oh yeah, i’ll let go my weekend anyway)
